


Denggerrengman

by likecrackingwater (1thetenfootlongscarf2)



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Post-Film, Post-Nuclear War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-07
Updated: 2015-12-07
Packaged: 2018-05-05 11:10:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5373167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1thetenfootlongscarf2/pseuds/likecrackingwater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He never comes back. His life is the Wastes, the empty places, the echoes from the screaming in his skull.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

They had left Uluru months back, the red dust kicked behind in a low cloud. Darla heard Da call it that. He said that in the time Before it had been called Airs, but that was a false name given by false men. She made it into a song set to the humming of the tyres. _Oo-la-roo oo-la-roo_. Around and around as the sun wheeled across the shocking blue sky. Mum said south was best, that they were headed to Sydney, the city with the Op-rah House on the Bay. She had tried to explain Op-rah, but she couldn’t sing well and Da didn’t anymore. Not after the Big Natter. Not after the hole in the sky.

 

Darla watched as the car swung left and the dirt became white.

 

“We’re almost there!” Mum crows, and “we’ve made it to South Australia” is Da’s only comment. He showed her a map once. He had kept it in the car when they first moved to Perth, before Darla. Before the Before. Darla hadn’t known Perth, or Sydney. Just Uluru and the Red Endless. She thought of the cities when she dreamwalked. Tall spires of metal with windows flashing in the sun. There would be room for everyone, like in Nawarla Gabarnmang. A huge space to live, with the long limbs of the elders stretched overhead.

 

There were images of creatures too. Things that looked like monsters. Yirlorloban and bilybanbilyban and gumurrinji. Frank didn’t like her speaking Wardaman because he wasn’t as good at it. Mum and Da didn’t speak it at all, but all of Darla’s friends did. A lone long cloud grew steadily larger in the distance.

 

********

 

Narrah heard her daughter slip into sleep in the back bench. Frank had nodded off earlier. He always slept in the car. Cursed with nearsight, it made him horribly carsick on the best days. Rick was whiteknuckling the wheel now. The group to the east became clearer the closer they got - two wagons, a hatchback that rode too high, and a bike. Or perhaps not. The bike hung back and to the side in a way that seemed calculated. Intentional.  

 

She looked at her husband. He turned the wheel towards the convoy.

 

“Load the long-gun” was all he said.

 

By the time they were within shouting distance night was almost on them.

 

The group had circled up, best they could. The bike was a quarter kilo off. A figure sat hunched over the handles.

 

“Why are we stopping?”

 

Narrah almost had a heart attack. Darla must have woken up.

 

“Group up ahead,” said Rick. “Going to say ‘hi’.”

 

“Is it safe?” her son was trying hard, but fear can leak in ways nothing else can.

 

“Alo yibujgun, you know.” Darla always spoke Aboriginal when she could fit it in. Narrah couldn’t fault her- it was the girl’s first language. Sometimes, like now, it was aggravating as well as next to useless.  But then… Narrah shook it off.

 

She looked at her husband. He handed her the cloth. “I’m going to wave hello, and we’ll see what they do.”

 

“Why can’t Da do it?”

 

“Because Mum’s closer.” Darla’s face was lined and pale. “And she’s protected.”

 

“That’s right.” Narrah wasn’t though. There were no synagogues here, not rabbis or Torah or shabbat. No wearing skirts to the knee, no covering her hair. No Hamesh, the Almighty. No rules out here underneath the killing sun.

 

She rolled down the window and waved the white flag.

 

*********************

A woman walked up to them. A long-gun was slung over her shoulder, hair braided in a coil like a copper snake.

 

“Hello!” She called. Narrah stepped out of the car. The woman backed up a step. Wary.

 

“Hi,” said Narrah. She wanted to be brave, but inside she was shaking with nerves. Her body felt hot and tight and weightless. The sun was too bright and her eyes watered.

 

“Who are you? Who is with you?”

 

“I am Narrah. In the car is my husband Rick. Our kids are Darla and Frank.”

 

“Kids?” The woman repeated. “Children?”

 

“Yes. Ten and fourteen. Fourteen and ten. Frank’s fourteen, he’s the oldest - ”

 

“That’s enough.” The woman pulled the gun up higher on her shoulder, tightened the strap. “That’s fine. You’re all fine. I’m Ragger. There’s seven people in my band. You can come in if you want.”

 

“We’re heading south.” Narrah was surprised when the woman nodded.

 

“So’re we. To Victoria.” The ease made things better. Narrah stopped counting the beats of her heart.

There was relief in each breath. Allies.

“Same here.”

 

“Come on.” The woman walked back to her convoy. And Narrah turned to talk to Rick.  

 

There was no pain. The ground simply slid away from her feet. She could hear Rick above her yelling, the sound of turning engines and then darkness and the rush of the ocean in her ears.

 

********

It was bluish at night. There were more stars than Narrah has seen as a child, the Milky Way spread rapturious above. Rick had her angled across his lap. Nearby was a low fire. The heavy smell of gas and cloth burning made her cough.

 

“You needed water,” was all he said as he brushed her hair off her face. There were seven people across the fire, all mid-thirties or forties; four women and three men. A loud bark of an engine overturning startled them all. It was the biker. He was crouched next to his vehicle. Eight. There were eight of them.

 

Narrah checked the faces. Ragger. “I thought you said seven.”

 

Ragger shrugged. “In my group. He’s not.”

 

Rick leaned back. Narrah knew he was reaching for Frank, for the knife the boy kept strapped to his side.

 

“Who’s he?” Darla asked.

 

“He’s insane,” muttered one of the men. His long knotted hair fell in his eyes. He was drinking hooch. Narrah could smell it.

 

“Totally troppo.” Another agreed. “He barely talks. He hums a lot.”

 

“I hum.” Darla said. “Do people hum in Victoria?”

 

“Do people ‘um in ‘tori? All I know is m’name’s Neck Oil, and n’uthing else.”

 

“It’s true,” added a woman. She walked towards Narrah and crouched in front of her. “And I’m Cocky. We’ve already met your family.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“Is he dangerous?” Frank again.

 

Neck Oil’s eyes widened in comical fear. “You can ask him youself!” He threw himself back in mock fear.

Darla burst into tears. Frank made a wheezing gasp and tried to burrow between Narrah and Rick. There was no room and Narrah shouted. The fear left as quickly as it came.

 

For a moment there was nothing but the hissing of the fire.

 

“Damn.” One of the women was speaking. “Did not expect that reaction.”

 

Narrah sat up and attempted to hush Darla. “It’s alright, it’s alright.”

 

She wasn’t quite brave enough to look at the convoy right now. Fucking Ragger. Fucking roaddies.

 

“‘mm…” A person coughed. “Sorry.” The voice was like metal over stone.

 

When Narrah turned to see who was talking, the group was frozen.

 

Behind them stood a figure. He was impossibly tall. His hands trembled slightly. Troppo, Neck Oil had said. The man looked it. His jacket had a sleeve gone. His leg had a brace. Some buried part of her, the physio part that had rusted in the far north, took notice.

 

The man made the strange humming noise again. It was disconcerting. It was not a human sound.

 

Darla sniffled in her hold. “I’m Darla.”

 

Narrah pulled the girl onto her lap.

 

“I’m Darla. Yilama wurruqu jordjordin.”

 

At this he perked up. There wasn’t recognition. Less than a hundred people spoke Wardaman Before. It was interest, behind his creaking intellect. He made a different sound, more of a murmur. It took a full two seconds before Narrah understood. He was talking to himself.

 

The man wandered back to his bike. They let him go with no more sounds then the wind over the sand.

 

****

 

On the road again, Frank sat in front with his father, squinting at the map. His mother and sister were huddled in the back. Occasionally he would sneak a look in the sideview mirror. There was a dark smear in the back, the crazy man. Frank knew how bad the world was. He remembered the trip to Nawarla Gabarnmang (though not leaving home). Darla hadn’t existed then. Just him and Mum and Da and Tom, brave Tom, older Tom. Tom who had gone to a real school and seen real movies and knew what hope and water were. Had seen rain with his own eyes.

 

Frank squinted at the map. The letters became clear only at certain angles. It never held for long. In some of the books back home there were picture of people wearing glasses. Frank couldn’t imagine people seeing any better by looking out of little windows.

 

“How much further?”

 

Da cracked his neck and looked at the dash, at the sun. “We’re pushing through tonight. Kittern said there was a stop in fifty kicks.”

 

Frank looked at the sun too. “Should be there by half-day.”

 

“Noon,” Da corrected. “And later. Closer to five thirty.”

 

“Which one’s Kittern?” Frank asked, ignoring the correction. The sand was yellow now. Noon meant nothing to him.

 

“The brown haired girl. With the headband.”

 

“They all have headbands,” Frank complainted. Da laughed and laughed and laughed.

 

*****

“Why are we going to Toria?” Darla whispered in her mind.

 _Victoria victoria lead us to glory-a_ came the response. There was a humming that sounded like _yes no_ like the insane dust man. She dreamt of the songline and Barnumbirr and her rope. The Seven Sisters were calling in her head and she sang along.

 

A hand on her arm woke her up. The sun was lower now. The bike passed by and Darla watched it go with heavy eyes.

 

“Are you awake?” Mum asked in a loud whisper.

 

“Um...” Darla yawned. “Yeah. I’m very awake.”

 

“Good. Your Da and I wanted to talk to you.”

 

Frank groaned somewhere in front. “Why?”

 

“We don’t want you talking to the men when we stop tomorrow. Alright?”

 

“None of them? Or just the crazy one?”

 

Da smacked Frank. Darla flinched a little.

 

“None of them. And don’t even look at the biker.” Da sounded angry.

 

“He’s killed more people than we’ve met.” Mum added in her stern voice. It was the voice that warned of impending tragedy if you weren’t in bed in the count of three.

 

“I think he’s hurt,” and that was Frank, being stubborn for the sake of it.

 

“He is,” Mum agreed. “Go to sleep. And keep sleeping until we stop. We’re running low on food.”

 

******

 

By the time they stopped Darla couldn’t feel her feet anymore. When she tried to step out her legs folded neatly and she sat on the ground. She was as surprised by the noise she made as the man walking past.

 

He stopped and looked at her askance, head cocked. His hands fluttered.

 

“Hello,” whispered Darla.

 

He blinked rapidly and answered with a clicking sound, harsh and ugly. Then he shook his head and wandered off. Strong hands hooked under her arms and dragged her upright. Her knees shook but the hands held her until her feet were sure.

 

“You okay? Okay?” This woman was short enough to be a girl. Her hair was an ugly mix of yellow and brown. It was unevenly cut, half her head scarred. Her eyebrows were gone as well, thin lines of red tissue marking her expression.

 

Darla nodded.

 

“I know you a good kid, but stones at crows. Stones at crows.”

 

The woman patted her chest. “Tuck.” Then she patted Darla’s shoulder.

 

“Darla.” Darla swallowed, “Mangulng, to my friends.” An old joke that only she knew now.

 

“Okay, okay.” The woman nodded rapidly. “He… him...” she pointed. “Feral. Says on his back. Dangerous.”

Tuck dragged her over to the others. A cup and a brick of paste were pressed into her hands. Both were gritty.

 

Neck Oil was lying under the hatchback. Frank was squatting next to him, listening as the man spoke. A woman with dark hair and a white headband leaned on the boot. That must be Kittern. Next to her was Cockey, their heads tipped back to watch a ragged bird in the sky. Mum and Da and Ragger were looking at the map.

 

Tuck kept patting Darla’s shoulder, touching her arm and elbow and asking ‘okay? okay?’ between sips of water. It almost made her want to drop the cup and run. The noise was drilling into her head.

 

“I’m fine,” Darla insisted. “I’m okay. ”

 

Kittern, or maybe it wasn’t, waved them over.

 

Frank was talking to Neck Oil.

 

“... and then Nick broke his leg jumping off it. He had to lay down for a week.”

 

Neck Oil turned his head. His face was covered in grime, sand pooling on his shirt. “You let him stay?”

 

“Well… yeah...” Frank looked uncomfortable. “He mum and dad and Grit and Edin all lived there too. They wouldn’t just kick him out.”

 

“Why not?” Kittern asked. “Broken legs take a long time to heal.”

 

“Only the the really bad ones,” Frank protested. "His wasn't so bad."

 

There was a keen expression upon the leathered skin of Kittern's face. "So you had to stop for awhile?" Her eyes glittered like slit oil.

 

Darla jumped in. "No, we just had him in the back of a truck - His family's truck."

 

Neck Oil slithered out from under the car, his hands and face black with crime.

 

"Where are they now?"

 

"Dead." Frank's face was flushed. "A few years ago. It was awful."

 

Beyond them all came a dashing , wheezing sound. The feral man was grasping at his face. He turned as his fingers plucked at his skin.

 

"What's he doing?" Darla almost did want to know.

 

"Beats me," said Frank. The adults were quiet and just watched.

 

 

  
******

 

The caravan hugged the broken road as it winded itself southward. Darla convinced Mum and Da that she should ride with Kittern. The hatchback bounced over the uneven ground like a ship. Frank squinted into the dying light.

 

Two nights ago they left the Red Waste and the final lines of the Seven Sisters. Although he said He didn't take it more seriously as Mum’s Hashem, he felt lost. He thought of it more than he meant to. Now that it ended he was scared. If the dreaming was with him, could follow him anywhere, then he shouldn’t be scared. He was anyway. Darla had learnt some of the dreaming in school, but Frank knew Kardu tiriwun. He hummed it under his breath as Da spoke to Mum over the seat. She was driving again and oversteered around holes that the hatchback barreled through. Fank half-wished Darla would get sick. Then the others wouldn’t think she was so special, with her songlines and the dreaming of the Honey Ant. Even the wordless man listened to that dreaming. The feral, Neck Oil called him.

 

Darla was too young but Frank remembered the way north. Remembered the white house with torn curtains with the shed of cracked bones. He remembered Mum crying. She wanted to bury them but Da and Tom snuck out at night and burnt it to the ground. She didn’t talk for a long time. Not to Da, not to anybody. Then they lost Tom and she talked again but not about Tom. It was like he never existed. Like someone crept into her head and cut of her dreamings of Tom.

 

Frank knew Mum didn’t have dreamings. The Hashem was more important to her. She had tried to explain the rules to him, when he was younger and they had been at Nawarla Gabarnmang a short time. Darla wasn’t even a thought yet. Not to Frank.

 

The thought of so many rules was silly to him. He told Mum about the dreaming, about the ancestors and the songlines that should belong to him. Endner had taught him one about rain, about the songlike that was his duty. When he told her this she yelled and told him his ancestors didn't come from the dirt. The she yelled Da, that she hated the North and wanted to go home. That the Aboriginals were corrupting him and Frank. He remembered the shouting had scared him. Frank kept his dreamings hidden after.The dreaming had made his nearsight seem unimportan By the time Darla was born Mum pretend not to care.t.  

 

As the sun set he whispered Kwatye ke artweye to the dead world past the glass. He wished he could share it with Da, but Da was dismissive of the dreaming, of all of that. He called it _fairy tales_ when he was kind and _lies_ when he wasn’t. When he was in the lowest, darkest mood he would seek Frank out, corner him in Nawarla Gabarnmang against the red walls and hiss _Tom wouldn’t believe in this stupid shit, it’s bad enough I have to deal with your mother_ then leave Frank shuddering in the gloom. After the Big Natter Da ignored it entirely. Frank sometimes wished Da cared more, that he would have been a kwertengwerle like his friends’ fathers. Out here, further south than Frank had ever been, he was furious that Darla was able to share dreamings that he had never learnt; that he knew dreamings that no one else would ever hear.

The dust shifted into pillars of curling wind that whipped across the windscreen. One of the cars slowed to flank Mum’s side. She shouted to them a bit, then turned to Da.

 

“We’re going to stop in a half hour.”

 

Da grunted and looked at his watch. Frank has tried to learn about the time. His nearsight was too bad, and the numbers melted in his mind. John, the kwertengwerle who had given Frank his altyerre, taught him to measure the journey of the sun. That made Da angry too. Lucky Darla knew about time, knew about writing, about science. Frank knew the Emu dreaming, the Rain-Maker dreaming, the dreaming only for men; dreamings secret from boys and women. He had been instated in the proper way, starting at ten. Da didn’t know about most of it.

Frank absently ran his tongue along his teeth, feeling for the gap on the right side. John and Beni had given him that two weeks before they left. Mum had been livid, even though Frank lied and said it was from a fight.

 

**********

 

Rick rummaged through the boot. He could hear Darla up ahead with the women and Narrah. He found her noise more annoying the closer they got to Sydney. Only days from his parents’ house, and just beyond that lay Melbourne and Jacko. Sane days he remembered their last phone calls the hushed panic as the world burned. That was the time he began to resent Narrah. He never thought too much about religion. It was enough to be secure in himself, in his family. Then the news got worse and Narrah became obsessed. Praying three times a day, following all the rules of Shabbat. It drove him mad. Rick thought it would've come to a head earlier but by then the world folded in on itself. He still remembered the staggering disgust he felt when he realized that she hadn't bathed for a whole day. It wasn't so much the hygiene that bothered him as the idea she thought it would work. The she thought magic was something that was real, that what she ate and wore mattered to some god that Rick tolerated then and ignored now. When the world was normal he could push his distaste for superstitions beneath the surface. Tom had been like him. Logical. Factual. Then his good son had died and all he had left was a half blind one with a missing front tooth.

 

Rick knew it was an Aboriginal thing. Had to be, from the way the men treated Frank before they left, the missing tooth, the stiffness in his movements. Frank hadn’t fought with the other boys since the first week. His son listened to him because he was the boy’s father, carried his knife because Rick asked. But there was a difference between being a father and acting father. He hadn’t done much of the latter.

 

There was not room for regret now. He had forgotten the taste of it. Now it rose up bitter and chalky in his mouth. Wouldn’t do to show weakness. These roadies were mad. They had been with each other too long, had accepted oddness as normality and forgotten about real human interaction. As Rick moved a bag a clutch of lizards fell free. They separated when they hit the ground and scattered like a school of fish. He could barely remember the last time he had eaten fish, far far North. Some of the roadies thought the sea had dried up. There wasn’t enough leaning left in the world to explain how that wouldn’t be possible, their existence wouldn’t be feasible if all the water was gone.

 

Raggar, Kittern, and Narrah were clustered around one of the cars. The back doors were welded shut. There were stacks of cloth and the women sorted through them. Concealed weapons were the best bet - and Rick had tried to shelter Narrah and Tom and Frank from the worst of it. But then they found the bodies. Rick knew how to skin a roo. He had seen some of his mates do it a few times, struggling to drag the six foot animals through the dirt. Human would weigh less, would butcher faster. The night he and Tom went to burn them Narrah finally cast aside her blindness. She had finally seen the world Rick had tried to hard to protect them from. And she blamed him for it, he could tell.

 

Tusk and Darla were sitting in the boot of the hatchback. Rick could see them swinging their legs like kids. He could hear Neck Oil underneath, calling for Eril and Windy to pass him tools. They looked the a couple, those two, with brown hair and hard eyes. Someone was coming up behind him. Rick could feel the small, animal fear rising the the pit of his stomach. It ran, clattering, up his back to rest behind his eyes.

 

Suddenly there was an awkward thumping. It sounded almost rhythmic. Rick looked.

 

The feral man was stomping on the ground. Rick remembered the warnings, the whispers after the children were asleep. How he had saved the roadies and haunted them ever since. Nightmare stories heralded by a hunched, wordless monster. The Red Waste could strip men of their mind, their hopes. Rick had never seen one so inhuman. He saw Darla start to come towards him, followed by Frank. Rick barreled towards them.

 

“What are you doing?” He hissed, a hand on each arm. They felt so thin. So brittle.

 

“We wanted to see what he was up to.” Frank never looked him in the eye. Rick hated that. It wasn’t disrespect or indifference, but it felt like it.

 

“There’s nothing to see. Go back to you mother.”

 

Darla’s eyes widened. “He’s coming here.” Her voice was a thin a bloodied knees.

  
Rico's head moved faster than his thoughts. He looked into the eyes of a gone man, a feral thing with not two words to rub together.


	2. Glossary

**Wardaman**

Mangulng - owl

Mangali - young girl

Yilama wurruqu jordjordin. - Supposedly, you are mad.

Yirlorloban - King Brown snake

Bilybanbilyban - devil dog

Gumurrinji - emu

Alo yibujgun - Hello wild things

Kwatye ke artweye - Rain-Maker Dreaming

kwertengwerle - rutural caretaker

 denggertengman - empty 

 

Resources - **Wardaman**

 

Songlines and Navigation in Wardaman and other Aboriginal Cultures

 

<http://www.atnf.csiro.au/people/Ray.Norris/papers/n315.pdf>

 

Language Information

 

<http://austlang.aiatsis.gov.au/main.php>

 

# A Grammar of Wardaman: A Language of the Northern Territory of Australia

  
[https://books.google.com/books?id=cq84wbbabOsC&pg=PA580&lpg=PA580&dq=list+of+Wardaman+words&source=bl&ots=jPxtEVWtTW&sig=5oyTuuzFQizM0dXwz9JRJdCvQ6k&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAWoVChMIi5zikrT-xgIVhs2ACh0NMAxm&authuser=1#v=onepage&q&f=false](https://books.google.com/books?id=cq84wbbabOsC&pg=PA580&lpg=PA580&dq=list+of+Wardaman+words&source=bl&ots=jPxtEVWtTW&sig=5oyTuuzFQizM0dXwz9JRJdCvQ6k&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAWoVChMIi5zikrT-xgIVhs2ACh0NMAxm&authuser=1#v=snippet&q=owl&f=false)


End file.
